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The Way of Love

12/26/2018

We may wonder what God was thinking when God sent the Son into the world to save the world, but how else was God going to persuade us than by knowing our lives inside out, unless the Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14), unless God assumed our nature and became one of us, unless God took upon himself our faults, our weaknesses, our sin? For God knew that he could not save what he did not assume.
In God’s way of thinking, this is how the plan was to be put into action. This is how God would decide to get close to us again. This is how God would invite us to return to him: condescending to us and arriving in this world in the form of a baby, in the womb of a peasant girl named Mary, walking and teaching and, yes, dying, on this earth in Jesus (Luke 1:26-38).

No, it doesn’t add up. But perhaps that’s not the point. Rather, the point has to do with who God is and how God acts. The point is that this is how God chose to save us: by becoming one of us.

Call it a crazy kind of love, I know. Call it risky, daring. Call it sacrificial, costly. Call it compassionate, vulnerable. Call it what you must, but call it for what it truly is – God in the flesh, God with us in a way that would reveal to us the power and mystery of the God who will draw to himself all creation. Indeed, the whole world!

That’s Christmas in a nutshell, after all!

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

What kind of love? Self-giving love! The way of love at Christmas is self-giving.

How may we receive such self-giving love? If you have not, may we invite you to do so, to experience what Charles Wesley calls “second birth”?

May God’s love in Christ find a home in your heart.

Merry Christmas!
Pastor Andy Kinsey

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The Way of Fearlessness - Matthew 11:2-11

12/19/2018

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In Matthew 11:2-11, we find John the Baptist in prison, placed there by Herod. While in prison, John is beginning to have doubts, even some fears, about his cousin Jesus’ actions in the northern part of the country. John is hearing things, and he is beginning to wonder if Jesus is really following his script as Israel’s Messiah.

That is, John was reading the script where Messiahs would do grand and amazing things, but he is realizing that it wasn’t happening. John was expecting Jesus to do something revolutionary, like dethrone Herold and get him out of prison, but that wasn’t happening either. And John was expecting Jesus to bring his powerful kingdom to bear on Israel’s sins and set the whole place ablaze with God’s winnowing fire, just as the prophet Elijah had done with the prophets of Baal, but that also wasn’t happening.

John is beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake trusting Jesus. Hence, the question to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matthew 11:2-3).

John is expecting action and deliverance, but what he gets from Jesus is a strange response. Jesus tells John’s disciples:

"Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news delivered to them. And blessed are those who take no offense at me."

To be sure, if there is one thing that John the Baptist would have known it was this passage from prophet Isaiah. And Jesus would have known that John would have recognized Isaiah 35.

But what John was wondering was whether he had been missed something: after all, Jesus was also going around befriending tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 11:19). Jesus was being accused of being a drunkard and a glutton (Matthew 11:18). And Jesus was gaining a reputation, but not for what John (and many others) were anticipating.

During Advent, what are we expecting God to do? Who is it we are truly waiting for? How may God confound our expectations?

As we approach Christmas, may God surprise us with grace and truth?
Pastor Andy Kinsey

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The Way of Peace - Matthew 24:44

12/5/2018

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There are two kinds of stories people tell: the story everyone remembers and the story everyone forgets to remember. It seems so often in today’s culture we forget the story we need to remember the most. A story that begins this first weekend of Advent.

We are on our way. Ready or not and whether we feel prepared or not, we are on our way to Christmas.

We all know what that means right? We are on the way to long lines at the mall and shoppers on the lookout for bargains. We are on the way to bringing out the decorations and seeing which strand of lights needs replaced. We are on the way to finding the perfect gift while staying on budget. Lastly, we are on our way to dealing with impatient crowds and stressed out sales clerks.

But what if it didn't’ have to be that way. What if we could find a way to to a better way? What if we could cultivate a way within ourselves that leads to peace, fearlessness and faithfulness. What if those could be our gifts this year?

Sure there would still be lines, decorations, tangled strands of lights, price tags, letters to Santa, pine needles on the floor, and impatient crowds, but all of that would be on the way to something bigger, something greater, something far more meaningful.

Isaiah 2:1-5 speaks of a time of great peace. It says “God will settle things fairly between nations. God will make things right between many peoples. They will turn their swords into shovels and their spears into garden hoes. No more will nation fight nation; they won’t play war anymore. Come family of Jacob, let’s live in the light of God.”

Perfect isn’t it? The picture perfect scene of peace. No more war. People sharing, working, giving, receiving, doing and being all from a place of peace. Like a painting or piece of music that takes you to a place of serenity and calm A place we all long for in some way yet never quite attain on our own. Notice however, it doesn’t say there won’t be tension, disagreement, or opposing ideas.

Those things will still exist as long as we humans are involved. It does say though that God will settle things, not us. God will make things right between people. We say we want peace, but I fear we want it on our terms, within our own boundaries, and on our own time frame. You know as well as I, it doesn’t work that way. It didn’t in the times of the prophets, those first followers of Jesus, and it doesn’t work that way today.

Recent survey results indicate we are an anxious people - majority of people living in constant flux, frustration and fear. Look around and you will see so much of our chaos is rooted in fear. Fear of being different. Fear of appearing weak. Fear of making someone mad. Fear of losing control. Fear of what is different. Fear of what is unknown. So many of the decisions being made, and choices being implemented are fear based.

Sounds like the way many in our world live today - in that unsettled state where anxiousness brews - as we watch the political scene unfold or fall apart, as more and more time, resources and attention are given to things that matter to very few, while less and less are given to things that matter to a great many.

That is not how we are called to live as followers of God and Jesus. That is the not the advent message found in Isaiah or Matthew 24, which includes the words, “keep awake, therefore,” “understand this,” and “you also must be ready” - words that can guide us toward a readiness for Jesus’s coming. These words call for an active waiting, and active expectation of something worth waiting for. We live in turbulent and dangerous times, that is true, but it does not mean peace is not possible. It means it comes in unexpected ways and we must keep watch for them.

This Advent do not sit idly by - Wake up! Seek out the way of peace - even in the walmart parking lot. Open your heart to what it takes to live in peace even with those you don’t agree with. Surrender that which keeps you from knowing peace - even if it means apologizing, accepting an apology, or letting go on long held anger. Pursue that which promotes peace for all people - even when others around you do not. Cling to the promise “all things work together for good” and “nothing can separate us from the love of God” and “all things are possible with Christ.”

That is the gift of Advent, of pursuing peace with God, and cultivating a heart more willing and ready to give and receive that which we find in the manger. And that is definitely worth waiting and preparing for.

God be with us on this Advent journey.

Amen.
Pastor Jenothy Irvine

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